One has just been sent out as a biblical dove, has found nothing green, and slips back
into the darkness of the ark -- Kafka

Sunday, October 2, 2011

"To the Finland Station": Anatole France (1844 - 1924)

Anatole France was not a historian but a French writer very much concerned with history (according to Wilson). For Wilson France marks the "decline of the revolutionary tradition."

Quotes from Finland re France:

Brousson records that, on one occasion, when asked why he was "drawn toward socialism," France had answered: "Better be drawn than driven."

To another caller, we are told by LeGoff, he said in answer to a question about the future: "The future? But, my poor friend, there is no future--there is nothing. Everything will begin the same again--people will build things and tear them down and so on forever. So long as men can't get outside themselves or free themselves from their passions, nothing will ever change. There will be some periods which will be more peaceful and others which will be more disturbed; men will go on killing each other and then go back to their affairs again."